As the sun set across Los Angeles's grey skyline yesterday, one employee charged with the seemingly impossible task of securing America's third busiest airport was dead. And more than a half-dozen more were injured.

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The alleged gunman, Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, felled by a bullet fired by an airport security guard who gave chase as hundreds of terrified passengers took cover, was in hospital, in critical condition.

And the media was left to pick through a news story which played off a tired old script: a lone gunman, a pointless crime, multiple victims and claims that Ciancia was depressed and suicidal.

Police gather at a home belonging to the father of the LAX shooting suspect Paul Ciancia in Pennsville, New Jersey. Photo: AP

The drama unfolded on an otherwise ordinary Friday morning at Los Angeles International Airport - known as LAX - when Ciancia walked into terminal 3 just after 9:20am.

He produced an assault rifle - a 223-caliber AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, claimed one witness - and a handgun and opened fire.

Eyewitnesses said he was wearing dark clothing, and was shouting as he launched a hail of bullets.

By accounts, he chose his targets carefully, directing his rage against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the government department charged with protecting US airports.

One witness said Ciancia paused on his rampage, pointed his gun at him, and asked him if he was a TSA employee. When the man said he was not, Ciancia left him unharmed and moved on.

According to police, he proceeded into the x-ray screening area and continued shooting. He then walked through the screening area and entered the "airside" of the airport.

On patrol: Police stand guard at Terminal 2 of LAX. Photo: AP

Airport police pursued him through the terminal and engaged him in an exchange of gunfire.

Terminal 3, which houses the airlines JetBlue, Spirit, Virgin America and Virgin Australia, is a composed of a slender concourse capped by a circular dome with a handful of arrival and departure gates.

It was at the end of the concourse, next to a Burger King outlet, where Ciancia was brought down by a bullet fired by an airport security guard.

Ciancia was then, along with six others, transported to two nearby hospitals connected to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) medical facility.

He is listed as being in critical condition.

Barely 100m away, in a parking bay on the tarmac, a planeload of Australians were among the dozens of planes which landed at an airport brought to a standstill.

As police officers swarmed into the terminal, Virgin Australia's daily flight, number VA1, which left Sydney the night before, was one of dozens which made it through before the airport was closed to air traffic. Some later flights landed, but most were diverted to nearby airports.

The plane - with more than 350 Australians on board - was held on the tarmac while security personnel swept the terminal area. The mood on board, passenger Alexander Reid told Fairfax, was calm, but tempered with "disbelief".

"The tarmac is full of planes but no movement. It's like a ghost town," Mr Reid said.

Inside the terminal, another Australian, school student Josh Odermatt, was in an airline lounge inside terminal 3.

He, along with hundreds of others, were slowly evacuated as the police, fearful there might be a second shooter, cleared the airport terminal room by room.

Passengers were told to "step around" any bullet casings or blood, in order to protect crucial evidence.

In an extraordinary reflection of the power of social media, Fox Sports journalist Bill Reiter, who was also at the terminal, was posting updates to his Twitter account in real time, as the gun battle raged.

"That is a kind of fear unlike anything I've ever experienced," he wrote.

"When gunfire broke out there was a stampede people, all of us hiding under seats we didn't fit under, we burst through the door to outside."

Reiter was held, along with hundreds of passengers, in a secure area inside the airport.

He noted that morale was kept high for the group by several Australian passengers who were "being funny, and gregarious, and kind".

It was, he wrote, "the other, better side of humanity on display."

Hours later, with only a fraction of the airport re-opened, a stream of passengers, and those seeing off friends or picking up relatives who were caught up in the mayhem, snaked down LA's Century Boulevard - still closed off to traffic - in search of transport or temporary accommodation.

The police, meanwhile, began to paint a familiar picture: Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was a New Jersey native who lives in Los Angeles. His brother told police that he had received a text message in which Ciancia said he was considering taking his life.

Ciancia's family then contacted Los Angeles police who spoke to his neighbours. But it was too late, however, and their "concern for welfare" call was ironically misplaced. Ciancia had already left his apartment, bound for LAX, with a bag containing guns and ammunition.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this was not the first shooting at LAX. That was back in 2002, when two passengers were shot and killed by another lone gunman in the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

What threatens to permanently shatter the already unsteady faith of the millions of passengers who course through its terminals every year, however, is resignation to the fact that it will surely not be the last.

2 Nov
The New Jersey man who was shot and arrested after killing a Transportation Security Administration officer was remembered by neighbours as ''just a normal kid'' who attended the local high school and worked in his father's car repair shop.

3 Nov
An Australian student who was in a Virgin America lounge at Los Angeles International Airport as a gunman opened fire in the terminal, killing a security officer, has given a detailed account of the fear and panic of passengers waiting for flights.

3 Nov
Hundreds of Los Angeles International Airport staff have today begun the almost impossible task of re-scheduling some of the more than 1550 flights and 160,000 passengers affected by yesterday's deadly shooting.